They had a variety of opinions to offer, but their only consensus lie in that the sick old man must not risk the efforts of travel. Despite his objections to the description of himself, Hardt found he was too painfully tired to argue.
The rains passed and winter approached. The moat froze over and Mowden himself taught Tor how to skate on the ice. Then the ice melted. Jaythree and Mobious volunteered to help with planting in the small garden and outside the walls at the eastern farm. Five moons soon had waxed and waned since their arrival at Forte. Jaythree shared a small room with Tor and another mother and her two children while Mobious and Hardt had been moved, by healers’ requests, into a room with a fireplace and large plush bed.
Hardt lay in the bed one spring night, listening to the pop and crackle of the fireplace and seeing behind his eyelids the pop and crackle of Pace. He was again turning the corner of buildings and running for Mobious whom he saw kneeling far in front of him. But as Hardt ran down the street, he saw the body cradled in the boy’s arms was Vyck. Vyck as she had looked when he was a young boy, fierce and strong with sad eyes and short raven hair. She was deep in conversation with Mobious. Hardt couldn’t hear what she was saying. He ran faster, but still couldn’t reach his aunt. Suddenly a swarm of shadows swept over them and the spitting fire was drowned by the sound of a hundred dragons crying in the old dTur tongue.
“Go!”
“Go.” “Go!”
Hardt looked away from the swooping dragons to see that he had finally reached Vyck too late. She was dead. As he knelt at her side, she opened her eyes.
“You’re running out of time.” She whispered.
“The queen won’t believe me. She believes the dTelfur killed her parents.”
“Her anger will be tempered by her partner.”
Vyck’s words were stepped on by another’s words. “It doesn’t matter.”
Hardt looked up at the unexpected voice. Mobious was no longer cradling his dead aunt. Konifer was.
The missing Vize spoke. “You must try. Mobious must see you try.”
“Go now, Hardt.” Sophie approached from out of the thickening smoke, walking slowly towards them with her head lowered to accommodate the resting hand of young Hundred who walked beside the great dTur.
“Take my grandson to Voferen Kahago,” she said before Sophie repeated herself.
“Go now, Hardt. If you don’t go, the dTur will never fly again.”
Instantly upon those words, the cacophony silenced and the air went still. Sophie disappeared and all the swooping dragons with her. Hundred stood alone, a hand on her hip, waiting for him to move.
Hardt took a breath to protest his insignificance but found Vyck standing beside him, long white hair streaming behind her in a cold wind, “Listen!” She screamed. “Get up and go. Now!”
Hardt sat up in bed covered in sweat. The sky was still dark outside the slit of a window over the little writing desk on the wall and the fire had burnt down to a few glowing embers. Mobious was sleeping soundly, one arm flung over the edge, the other tucked up with his fist curled under his cheek where it would leave a red mark for the first half hour of the morning.
For a moment, Hardt forgot what had woken him so suddenly. Then an ember popped in the grate and his dream came flooding back. And he leapt out of the bed to pack.
Every healer came by to protest the journey. Kivress implored them to stay a while longer. Tor cried passionately at leaving his new friends. But Jaythree and Mobious saw the look in the old lander’s eyes and followed his orders without question.
That same day the foursome said their good-byes. Kivress and Mowden gave them wrapped bundles of food. Lord Donem and her new bond Jae gifted them with warm travelling cloaks. Tiront, Stere’s family, and all their other brief friends gave them only hugs and well wishes. And by noon they were well on their way north for Voferen Kahago.
Ten
∞
It took them two moons to reach the gates. They traveled slowly, resting often for Hardt’s failing health. But each morning they started early, Hardt renewed by his dreams.
Noon was a few hours gone when they finally arrived at the wall surrounding the castle and shale of Voferen Kahago. The wall stood, by Mobious’ description, three Deg’s high and each door of the open gates was an Akai in length. To their right, a couple hundred greg beyond the guardehouse, the wall tapered down and disappeared into the waters of the great lake they’d been walking beside for two suns. Two guarde were officially watching the gate. A couple more wings of guarde looked to be performing some kind of strengthening exercise in a clearing to the left, just inside the wall.
All four travelers stared with awe at the immense castleshale before them. Few trees disturbed the wide arrangement of cottages, meeting halls, and two or three-story houses. More people than they’d seen at once were rushing along the intricate arrangement of wooden rain-walks. Far in the distance they could see castle Kahago rising above the landscape and the wall. They perhaps would have stood there in awe for the rest of the afternoon had one of the two guarde not approached.
“Welcome to Voferen Kahago.”
Mobious stepped back to let Hardt do the talking. As he did and as Hardt turned to respond, the honor ring on his left arm was revealed.
The gatekeeper guarde stood straighter and offered a palm to Hardt. “A guardesman! Pleased to meet you. Where are you from, scout?”
Hardt was surprised. He wasn’t aware that the style of the band indicated his position. His hesitation lasted only a moment however and when he laid his palm on top of the guarde’s, it was in recognition of the guarde’s lack of an honor ring as was proper etiquette in the ranks. “I left the Stray Tor guarde a healer.”
The other gatekeeper had approached when her pal identified Hardt as guarde. Now she stepped forward, two honor rings on her left arm. “Only one honor ring has ever been awarded at Stray Tor,” she began.
Hardt quickly sidestepped the pending question, “We’re looking for Jaydee.”
“She’s in the barracks right now.” The first guarde gestured for them to follow him into the shale. “I’ll take you. We have quarters for visiting guarde so your family can settle in there and you won’t have to barter for a place in a public house.”
The other guarde held her questions with effort and fell back to a watchful position by the open gate as their guide led them off to the guarde’s home and training grounds along the lakeshore about halfway between the gate and the castle.
Mere moments after the four were left to settle in a room the woman known as Jaydee in Voferen Kahago, appeared at the doorway. Just a few frseason younger than Hardt she had ages more energy and strength. She froze in the doorway, struggling for breath as though she’d run to find them. Her eyes found Hardt sitting on the edge of a sleeping couch wrestling with an overexcited little boy.
“It is you.”
Hardt looked up. “Tallee.”
“It could be seventy frseason ago. I thought that was Ker.”
“It’s his grandson, Tor.”
“I’m Ker’s daughter, Jaythree.”
“But, have you really come from Stray?” Tallee looked between them, confused. “I thought you were… you weren’t there when I went back during the fever.”
“I returned after the Lost Battle.”
“I thought you died with everyone else.” Tallee still seemed to doubt that Hardt was real and her next question was desperately blurted out, as if he might disappear. “The dragons didn’t burn Pace did they?”
It was the visitors’ turn to freeze. Hardt set Tor aside and stood to cross the room to Tallee’s side, shaking his head. He took her by the arms and looked deeply into her guilty face.
“What do you know?”
“I was there,” her eyes looked everywhere around the room, “playing cross stones with Geonn, the Partner, when the Pace kid, Disru arrived with his story about two dragons burning down his village. I knew he was a bad kid and assumed he was lyin
g. But I didn’t think a child could cause so much trouble so I said nothing. By the time I realized what was happening and bothered to tell the kimoet what I saw in Disru, it was too late. They wouldn’t believe me. And then word came that Geonn was killed and Freyel disappeared along with half our forces and then the possibly even worse news that all the dTelfur were dead and the dragons immobile. I thought you were with them.” Finally she met Hardt’s eyes, a tear running down her cheek and she spoke through a throat almost too tight to get the words out. “I should have done more.”
“You could have saved them all.” It was a breathed thought, not meant to be heard.
“Mobi,” Jaythree started to comfort the boy but Hardt held a hand out to stop her. He said nothing as tears of infinite awareness and regret poured down Tallee’s deeply lined face.
After a few minutes he pulled the kimoet’s ancient missive from a pouch at his hip and put it into his old neighbor’s hands. “Take me to the queen.”
Tallee took a deep breath, staring down at the old scroll she’d delivered from Queen Frell and her Partner, Alierd seventy frseason before. “What are you going to tell her?”
Hardt said simply, “I’m going to tell her to listen. To listen more than her parents did.” Then he stepped back and motioned for his old neighbor to go first through the doorway.
Tallee started out, but then hesitated a moment longer. “Is there hope then?”
“Mobious,” Hardt turned and waved the dTelfur boy forward to go with them, “is hope.”
Jaythree scooped Tor up in her arms as he made to crawl off the couch and follow. “We’ll wait for you here.”
Tallee led them to a small flower garden at the center of a young maze of shrubs. She wanted to lead them directly into the castle, but Hardt asked that she find some place they could sit in the sun. So she helped Hardt settle on a curved stone bench along the knee-high circular hedge and went to bring queen Nrunel from the castle.
Mobious sat for a moment with his atchs after examining the small rosebush growing in the exact center of the garden. Thoughts were swirling through his brain, but he waited until Hardt had caught his breath before he asked.
“I am hope?”
Hardt put an arm around the boy’s shoulders. “All living dTelfur are hope and you are the vizet.”
Mobious let the thought sit for a while before he asked the question that was really weighing on his mind. “Do you really think I can wake the dTur?”
“Yes.”
Mobious laughed with relief at the terse answer, then sobered. “Do you think the landers will kill them when I do?”
“That’s what I’m here to prevent.”
“How?”
Hardt took his arm off Mobious’ shoulders and unclasped the honor ring from his bicep. He turned it over a few times in his hands, clicking it open and closed. “I have a reputation. The queen doesn’t know me but she knows my reputation. She’ll know, from this band, that I am the lander who successfully fought off a dTelfur attack, killed a slave and chased off a dragon. It will give weight to what I tell her. Also, that missive invited me to come and teach the Kavegan guarde how to fight the dragons.”
“The dragons are no longer a problem.”
“But they’re only asleep. Queen Nrunel doesn’t know when they’ll wake up.”
“And you’ll offer to teach the guarde how to fight them when they do?”
“I’ll offer to help prepare them for when the dragons awaken. I don’t like how this band labels me and I didn’t want to accept it. But Vyck asked me to see it not as a reminder of how I murdered your dam and failed my guarde but as a reminder that I overcame my own prejudice and fear to help Sophie even though it was too late to save dTserra’s life. I hope that I can teach that to the guarde.” Hardt put the ring into his atchs’ hands. “Take it, Mobious. And if, like me, you fail in your purpose remember that there is merit in trying.”
“You haven’t failed.” Mobious turned to him. “You’re here to tell the queen the dTelfur mean landers no harm.”
Hardt shook his head. “But the dTur might still be flying if I had come here seventy frseason ago.”
“If you had come here seventy sheddings ago, Konifer would probably have convinced the dragons to attack the landers. You may not have taught the landers to think of the dTelfur as sentient worthwhile creatures yet, but you did teach us about landers. Now Pacere and Stray Tor are integrated, even if they don’t all know it. You’ll think of the right things to say to the queen. And you’ll keep on teaching whoever will listen until it is safe for dTelfur to reveal themselves and for me to awaken the dTur.”
“Vyck would be proud of you, Mobi.” Hardt took the honor ring and clasped it around the dTelfur’s arm. “Now leave me alone for a moment. I need to think of what to say so that I don’t scare the queen or put you in danger.”
Mobious stood and flapped his arms at Hardt in a bold, affectionate dTur gesture. “Sophie would be proud of us too.”
Smiling, the boy ran off and wandered through the growing maze. The sun was starting to sink low in the western sky and it lit the castle in deep shades of red. Hardt found it hard to concentrate as he watched the young vizet playing, racing the maze, leaping the hedges when he got trapped in a dead end, and generally behaving more like a young boy than he had in ages. He was happy and wise and Hardt believed in that moment that he really would wake the dTur.
Mobious had just tripped over a hedge and was rolling in the grass, laughing at himself when he first saw the gloomy young man strolling through the maze. The stranger had thick dark curly hair and eyes which were set close together and staring at Mobious unkindly.
“Hi.” Mobious rolled to his knees and stood up. He barely came up to the older boy’s chest.
“What are you doing?” It was a voice as cold as the eyes.
“I’m waiting for the queen.” His proffered palm was ignored by the young man.
“Why?”
Mobious forced himself to smile as he gestured over to where Hardt sat on the other side of the circle with his face turned towards the lowering sun. “My father was invited to speak with her.”
“Who is he?”
“His name is Hardt. He’s a guardesman from Stray Tor.”
“Hardt?” The cold stranger suddenly looked interested. “The Hardt who escaped from Pace?”
“I only heard of one kid who escaped from Pace.”
“Hardt just escaped. I escaped and got rid of the place.”
Mobious took a step backwards. “I heard that dragons burnt it down.”
“Sure they did, starting with my grandfather’s place.” Disru, wandered through the flower garden, tramping on lilies, moving closer to Hardt. “But I’m gonna take care of the dragon problem too. That’s why I’m studying to be a bloodmage.”
Mobious, who didn’t want this frightening son of his atchs’ nephew any closer to Hardt, asked quickly, challengingly, “A bloodmage? You?”
Disru turned and with a look of scorn for Mobious, he negligently flicked a hand at the blooming rosebush in the exact center of the garden. The bush burst into flames. Mobious felt fury at the destruction but more deeply he felt the solution. As soon as he recognized that feeling, he asked a geyser to burst up from the water table deep beneath the fire.
Shock transformed the pyromaniac’s features and he took several steps towards Mobious, intending retaliation. But almost as instantly as the water consumed the fire, a flash of light shot up higher than the water into the sky, shimmering gauzily as the air over a flame. Mobious recognized it as the same kind of light he’d seen swallow half the people at the Lost Battle. Frozen to the spot, seeing Disru come for him out of the corner of his eye, the vizet stared into the light and saw a strange world. A world of mounted men and iron beasts spewing smoke. Metal skeletons rose into the sky with dirty children in strange clothing dashing around their feet. Noise beyond any festival cacophony assaulted his ears and smoke, curling out from the cold air stung his
eyes and throat.
He found himself powerless to move as the light expanded as it had at the battle. It pulsed once and pulled back into a single shimmering line reaching up out of the new fountain of water into the clouds. The fire was gone. The roses were gone. Disru was gone. But Mobious hadn’t been touched.
Mobious sank to his knees. He’d seen what had happened at the battle. The magic of the lander mages and Konifer’s natural request had collided just as Disru’s cruel spell and Mobious’ miracle had. Konifer, and the old lander queen for that matter, had gone where Disru now was, to this other world of iron and smoke. Somehow if he could find Konifer in this other world, he would only have to bring him back and the dTur would be saved.
“Mobious?”
Turning slowly, mouth still agape from the shock, Mobious saw Tallee standing at the entrance to the maze’s inner circle with a young woman dressed in the finest clothes he’d ever seen.
“Mobious, what happened?”
“Disru was here. We were talking and then…” He looked about and wondered how he could explain the new fountain, the lack of a rosebush, and himself on his knees. “I don’t know what happened.”
The beautifully dressed young woman strode forward and helped Mobious to his feet. “Did he hurt you?”
“No. I’m alright.” He brushed the dirt nervously from his knees while she looked him over and straightened his clothing.
“I’m Nrunel. Strange events often follow in Disru’s path. Now, Jaydee tells me your father is someone I should listen to.”
It took Mobious a few moments to figure out that she was referring to Tallee and to Hardt. “Yes, yes, Hardt is very wise.”
He found the queen’s presence surprising. She put him immediately at ease with the way she looked into his eyes as he spoke, as if he were the most important person in the world. Her smile was kind and generous and he returned it with pleasure.
A sudden crack of thunder split the sky as Tallee’s voice broke his expanding calm. “Did Disru touch Hardt?”
“No.” Mobious turned. “Why?”
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